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NASA’s commercial spacesuit program just hit a major snag (arstechnica.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/spaceflight

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

If NASA were to re-open competition, one of the bidders could be SpaceX, which has already designed a basic spacesuit to support the private Polaris Dawn mission.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (9 children)

SpaceX has saved NASA a ton of money on launch and ISS cargo/crew services. Rocket Lab and some CLPS providers are also shaping up to do so. I'd be down with getting Boeing and Lockheed out of space, though.

[–] ElderWendigo 2 points 4 months ago (4 children)

SpaceX has saved NASA a ton of money on launch and ISS cargo/crew services.

Privatizing a government sector and then subsizing its for-profit commerical replacement is the opposite of saving NASA (or taxpayers) money. I'm all for companies getting into space, but they should be getting support in the form of publicly available fundamental science and technology development from a properly funded NASA, not bids to do the work for them at a profit to those companies.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

You could make the same argument about anything else.

"Nutrition and proper healthcare are obviously very important, so there should be public backing behind them." (Which btw I support)

[–] ElderWendigo 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I agree with you.

We're paying for it anyway when a private enterprise develops this technology, but we don't get to keep the results of any of that development. That's my big problem with it. It's like any other tragedy of publicly funded projects/programs that ultimately only profit a select few like healthcare, stadiums, and pretty much any software as a service or closed source systems sold to public sectors. Those are just a few, but I'm sure there are more. This stuff is too important to the public good to be controlled and horded by corporations. The scariest thing in the alien franchise wasn't the xenomorphs, it was The Weyland-Yutani Corporation.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I haven't seen the alien franchise, but I agree with the rest.

To me, it seems to be a problem with IP ("intellectual property"). Setting IP higher should in theory advance private research and investment, while causing scarcity to the public having to rely on these services. Low IP means more equality within society, but also slower research/progress.

Personally I think that spaceflight is only at its very beginning; And it should be heavily invested and researched into. And stronger commercialization of space flight can help with that, IMO.

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